Stays in Vegas
by esentrik
Summary: When life takes a turn for the worst, where can Ranger turn? But, has his life really hit rock bottom?
1. Erase Song by Phil Vassar 2004

**Erase (track 5)- Phil Vassar: Shaken Not Stirred; 2004.**

**Bad move, baby I let you in.**

**You're a tattoo under my skin.**

**And I can't wash it off.**

**It's a permanent mark .**

Ranger took a burning gulp of his whiskey. The highest dollar whiskey money could buy. Something to drown the pain. Drown the future he thought he'd have, but never would. He'd done this for seven straight nights. Not like himself, and even he knew it. But the loss of his babe was hard. Too hard for even the toughest ex-army mercenary. But like an ex-army mercenary, he was too strong to cry.

**(chorus)**

**I try to let it go.**

**I try to chill.**

**Still I fell I'm under your spell.**

**Why the hell**

**Can't I just move on?**

**Your memory stays with me.**

**I can't escape, I'm running in place.**

**I can't erase you.**

He stopped drinking a shot before he would hit the illegal blood alchol level. Nothing left to do but go home. Unfortunately, he had to pass her apartment on his way home. He'd tried detours before, but the Bronco insisted he to her apartment. She wouldn't be there. And never would again.

**My mind won't let you dissapear.**

**And can't find any way out of here.**

**'Cause you're stuck in my brain.**

**And its a miserable pain.**

Day 8. Another horrible day. He avoided all his employees, cutting across the office hastilly and locking himself in the office. Tank pounded on the door, but backed off and slipped a note under the door. The note said:

**(chorus-ok, so I changed it alittle)**

_**You need to try to let it go.**_

_**You need to try to chill.**_

_**I'm sure you fell you're her spell.**_

_**Why the hell **_

_**Can't you just move on?**_

_**Her memory stays with you.**_

_**You can't escape, you're running in place.**_

_**You can't erase you.**_

_I know it hurts man. I've lost people too. Get a grip. The whiskey is only a bandaid Manoso. In the long run, it will still hurt. _

Tank left a scrbble of a signature behind. Whenever Tank mentioned Ric as "Manoso" he was really pissed at Ranger.

**I'd give anything to be free from you and me**

**Me and you, what can I do?**

**Oh what can I do?**

Ranger crupled the note into the size of a golf ball and threw it at the door. She was gone, forever. And he was supposed to just move on? Ranger knew he'd been stupid. Big bad Ranger, afraid of three words. God, if he had just said them, he'd have felt better. But he didn't.

**(chorus)**

**I try to let it go.**

**I try to chill.**

**Still I fell I'm under your spell.**

**Why the hell **

**Can't I just move on?**

**Your memory stays with me.**

**I can't escape, I'm running in place.**

**I can't erase you.**

Again, he headed to the bar. Tank was for sure guarding his door, like a panther waiting to pounce. Ranger resorted to the window. It was a three story sheer drop, but he'd rather face the cement than an angry army guy.

He ordered up one shot, and the bartender slid it across the bar to him a second later. He emptied it into his mouth, and then stared at the glass as he slowly swallowed it. It burned. He swirled the glass in a diagonal circle, the last drop following the bottom corner. He was contemplating another shot. That was the last thing he needed.

"Bartender?" Ranger lifted the empty glass, and the bartender handed him another.

Ranger stared at it for a moment. He lifted the glass and put it to his lips.

"You know, that could kill you." A familiar, female voice told him.

He jerked so suddenly, that a good portion of the drink sloshed down the front of his shirt. Not that it mattered. "Babe, what the?"

"I'll explain later. Hurry up, I have two seats on a plane to Las Vegas scheduled to leave in two hours." Said the beautiful brunette, standing in a glimmery cocktail gown.

Ranger stared at her, looking in her baby blue eyes feeling very vulernable. The woman, his babe was supposedly dead. Parametics confirmed it later. But how was she standing in front of him now?

"Babe?"

"I'll explain later. Hurry up, unless you don't want to go." She looked dangerous, not to anyone's life, but to Ranger. For a dead woman, she sure was making his heart do things it never had in his life, not ever.

He turned to the bartender, handed him a fifty and told him to keep the change. He was going to Vegas.

(I do plan to turn this into a story, eventually. Depends on the type of reviews I get. I could also use some suggestions on a title. I was thinking "Stays in Vegas" but that is a track(3) on Phil Vassar's new CD too.)


	2. The silent departure

_**Back by popular demand...thanks everyone!-Esentrik**_

She was standing outside, freezing her butt off yet wrapped tightly in a navy blue sweatshirt. She was dressed to kill, and her toes were a shade from blue.

"So..." She started, staring up at the stars the minute Rangers foot his the pavement.

"So, I hear we have a plane to catch." He said sternly.

"Yeah." She lowered her head from the sky above and settled it on Ric's face. "We do."

They stared at each other for a long time. Neither dared to move. Stephanie blinked a few time, and tears filled her eyes. Ranger took a step forward and held out his hand. "For a dead woman, you have a nice set of wheels." He commented quietly.

She smiled alittle and took his hand. He pulled her towards him, and wraped his arms around her chest, holding her back to his body. She looked at the car she had been leaning on. Shiny, black and expensive. A 2004 Ford Cougar, bought with the money she had been saving for the time in her life when she would get a new apartment.

"I'm not going to ask anything." Ranger said and gave her a gentle squeeze.

She nodded softly, and took a deep breath. She unwraped one of her hands, and extracted her keys from the pocket of her jeans. With the gently push of the button, the car's lights blinked on, and you could hear the locks pop.

Ranger kissed her hair, and then freed her from his grasp. Before pulling away completely, she opened his hand and closed it again, over the car keys. "What gate?" He asked.

She handed him the second ticket. Gate 4, departure time 12 o'clock midnight. Ranger glanced at his watch. They had a whole two hours to clear security. And they would need every minute of it.

Being careful, Ranger left his gun tucked under the driver seat with his maglight and other bad ass gadgets. Stephanie set her gun on the middle seat, backing away immediatly. She was still afraid of it.

Ranger glanced at her for a second, contemplating any possible reason why she had the gun in the first place. He remembered it not being in the cookie jar when he went through her apartment. Actually, that wasn't the only thing. No toothbrush, soap and very little make up. Ranger had assumed it was all at Joe's. He picked it up and set it beside his, only after he noticed there was a full round of bullets.

Security wasn't as big a mess as it usually was. The last time Ranger had taken a 747 like these was a few months after September 11, when all the rates were low. Stephanie was in line in front of Ranger, and carefully stepped out of her shoes and put them on the conveyor belt. Ranger had undone his while in line. She passed with flying colors, yet they held Ranger back.

He was pulled aside and thoroughly searched with a super-sensitive wand. It beeped just above his waist line. He lifted his shirt, and prodded at the ring in his belly button. Stephanie stared at it for a minute. She hadn't ever seen Ranger with his shirt off, visibly. Twice in the dark.

After another ten minutes, they let him go. Ranger checked his watch again. They still had forty five minutes. There was a few little shops, filled with knick nacks all plastered with the Statue of Liberty and the American flag. There was a book store, which Stephanie had begun browsing through. Ranger couldn't ever read a book while traveling. He was one of those types that hated being distracted. And with the Attacks hovering so close overhead, he certainly wanted to be the first into action if it were to be repeated.

He had lost valuable friends in the towers. It knocked the wind out of him, and he contemplated rejoining the army. But at that very time, Stephanie was thrown into his machine. The rookie without a prayer. Leaving her behind was like setting a newborn baby on someone elses door step. Some people could do that, others couldn't. And Ranger loved kids.

After twenty or so minutes, and $5.99 later, they made their way to the Terminal headed out to Las Vegas, Navada.


	3. The dissapearing act of Manoso

Their plane was delayed by forty five minutes. Ranger played with the book in his hands, but hadn't cracked the spine of it. Stephanie watched him out of the corner of her eye. He had on his 'face' and Steph couldn't see a trace of emotion. She could only guess that he was hurt, and she was the sole cause.

There was a whole lot she wanted to tell him but she couldn't find the words. How do you tell your mentor, friend and lover that you couldn't handle it? Stephanie understood that if she had just asked him, Ranger would have helped her out of anything. Truthfully, she liked the face that she could rely on him like that, but she felt that she had abused that power. So she dissapeard. But how to tell him that, and not make it seem like it was his fault?

"It's too quiet." Stephanie said calmly.

"I told you I wouldn't ask you any questions." He tossed the book in the empty seat next to him.

"You need to." She said quietly.

She was too used to Joe and the ultratantrums.

"A promise is a promise. And here is not the place." He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her partially out of her seat and held her there in the same manner you would have with a small child.

They began to call rows. Being as Stephanie had booked the flight with her own money, the tickets weren't first class. Ranger sat unconfortably in his seat. Stephanie noticed that first off. The pilot came on the intercom and told everyone to fasten their seat belts and then they began their take-off.

Stephanie watched the buildings get smaller and smaller. By the time they had gotten to the right altitiude the cabin had almost completely frozen over. Stephanie wiggle in her seat and brought her knees up and under her sweatshirt. She heard Ranger chuckle and she took off her socks. She slid them over her hands, and pulled the hood over her head. That got another chuckle.

"Here babe." Ranger said and pulled his own sweatshirt over his head.

"Won't you get cold?" She lifted her head off her knee.

Ranger stared at the baby blue eyes staring at him out of the hood of her jacket. "I'll live." He said and she took the jacket.

Ranger sensed that Steph was about to pass out. There were bags under her eyes, and she was having a hard time keeping her eyes open. Ranger lifted up the divider separating the two seats and Stephanie took the hint. She scooted over and leaned on him, and practically instantly afterwards, she was asleep.

And that left Ranger to wonder again. He had been piecing information together for the last three hours. His babe was suposedly dead. Head on collision with a large tree. Ranger had seen the mess of car that it had left. No survivors possible. She did it beacuse she was in over her head, and Ranger understood that. Why she didn't ask for help is what he didn't understand.

He had half a heart to ask. But he promised, and one of his rules was to not break promises. Like his rule to not do relationships. Even as badly as he wanted to break it, he wouldn't. Breaking one rule would lead to breaking the rest, and breaking the rest could cause problems for everyone around him. Instead, he just stroked her hair and smiled.

The plane touched down in Vegas at a quarter till 6 a.m. While passing through security, Ranger was pulled aside again, and the guard radioed someone in control to bring down an arrest record. Stephanie grimiced and sat down on the bench to wait for him.

Whatever prior arrests that had gotten him banned from the state of Nevada had been taken care of by his lawyer only a week after they found Samuel Singh shot dead in his car. But, like last time, they set him free with all his belongings.

"I never knew you had a belly button ring." Stephanie said when he was let out of the glass room, after being forced to lift his shirt again.

"One of those things I couldn't leave behind." He pulled Stephanie to him again.

Stephanie kept wondering why he kept doing that. On the plane, he almost seemed anxious to have her scoot next to him. And before that, he was only a hair away from her at all times. She was worried that she was breaking down Batman's ego. Stephanie compared it to breaking security at NASA. It wasn't done.

"I promised no questions, but since I'm driving, where are we staying?" Ranger asked.

"Shit. I hadn'gotten to that part." Stephanie suddenly panicked.

Ranger stopped infront of a hunter green Nissan Frontier. "Not a problem."

Stephanie watched him as he drove. He took his eyes off the road to watch the casinos pass by. Really unlike Ranger, she kept thinking. It was still in the dark of morning, and the casino lights were blinding.

"Would you like to stay on the strip or in the city?" Ranger asked and watched the Excalimbur pass by.

Stephanie looked at him with a twisted face. The city would be cheeper, and she could get off her chest what she needed to get off. But the strip might be fun, and it would give them something to do. Stephanie wasn't looking forward to going back to Trenton, if ever.

"I have a place in mind. They owe me a few favors." Ranger grinned and drove off down the street.

------------------------------

(Bach in Trenton)Esentrik must appologise for the creative cussing.

"Where the fuck could he go!" Tank exclaimed and threw a stack of papers onto his desk.

"He's probably drunk off his ass sitting somewhere in a bar." Lester said.

"He's not. I did a check of every fucking bar in Jersey." The vein in Tank's neck was prominent.

Just then, Bobby decided to walk in. He looked at Tank, then to Lester, then back to Tank. "Maybe I should come back at a better time." He said in a small voice.

"Just find that rat-bastard." Tank said, straightened out the papers he had thrown, and left.

"Which rat-bastard?" Bobby asked Lester.

"Ricardo. Carlos. Manoso." Lester said solemly, and retreated to his own desk.

"What'd he do? Skip again?" Bobby asked in a hushed tone as they both left.

"Sorta. Went out drinking last night and never came home. He probably just sitting somewhere with a hangover." Lester made his way down the staircase to the garage.

"Can't be too hard." Bobby said after a while, when they both slid into the black Range Rover Rangeman had provided for them.


End file.
